Typography Photograph Experiment

In order to create the font over an image of mine, I had to use various tools on Adobe Photoshop. I wrote the order of what I had done below:-

Click ‘Select’ then ‘Colour Range’. When the menu comes up, select ‘Shadows’ from the drop down arrow and click ‘OK’.  You then press the ‘cmd’ button and the ‘c’ at the same time to copy the image then ‘cmd’ and ‘v’ to paste the image onto a new layer.  Like before, click on ‘Selection’ then ‘Colour Range’, but this time select ‘Midtones’ from the drop down menu and click ‘OK’. Again you press the ‘cmd’ button and the ‘c’ at the same time to copy the image then ‘cmd’ and ‘v’ to paste the image onto a new layer.  Select both the shadows and the midtones layers and press ‘cmd’ and ‘e’ to join the two layers together.

The next stage is creating a new document for the text that will be on the photograph. The document will need to be 20 cm by 20 cm with a resolution of 300 pixels per inch.  Select the ‘text tool’ and drag the curser to cover the area of the page, which enables the text to be pasted on to the document. Open the word document where your text is and select the text and press the ‘cmd’ button and ‘c’ to copy the text. Go back to the document where the text box has been drawn and paste the text into it by pressing ‘cmd’ and ‘v’. The font can be changed by selecting the drop down menu towards the top of the application along with the font size.

The next step is to click ‘Edit’ then select ‘Define Brush Preset’ and give it a name and select ‘Ok’. This has saved the font as a brush preset. Go back to your other document, select the ‘brush tool’ and create a new layer. Then select the brush that has just been made (the font) and adjust the pixel size so that the brush is not too big, this will allow the brush to be enlarged later to get a layered effect of font at various sizes. Make sure the colour is on black and that the opacity is on 100%, and then just click on the image as this makes the font appear where you have clicked. Do this a few times so that the image is covered with writing. Once that has been done, the pixel size can be increased so that font layers can be added at a bigger size. Play around with this until you are happy with the layout.

The next step is to create a layer mask. To do this select the layer where the font has been placed and then click the layer mask symbol which is the third symbol in along the bottom of the box where the layer information is. A box will appear next to the thumbnail of that layer to show you have created it. Hide that layer by clicking the eye symbol on the layer information and go back to your layer that is the shadows and midtones of your photograph, press ‘cmd’ and ‘a’ to select all of it, then ‘cmd’ and ‘c’ to copy, show the text layer again and click the layer mask thumbnail and hold down ‘alt’ and click to bring the layer mask up. Then press ‘cmd’ and ‘v’ to paste the selection. Press ‘cmd’ and ‘d’ to deselect the image and ‘cmd’ and ‘i’ to invert the image.  Hide the shadow and midtones layer and click the image to see the effect emerging. Create a new layer and drag it below the layer with the layer mask on it and make sure the colour selected is white and use the ‘paint bucket tool’ to colour the layer. This allows you to see the text a bit clearer. Next, select the font layer and click ‘Blending Options’. Open the ‘Gradient Overlay’ box and select ‘Screen’ for the blend mode and then choose your gradient. After clicking ‘OK’, you can adjust the scale of it to make the colour blend either bigger or smaller and also change the angle of the colour blend. Once happy with the colours, click ‘OK’. Next, click on the ‘brush tool’ and make sure the colour is selected on black, choose a nice soft brush from the brush presets, make the opacity lower so it does not ‘brush away’ too much of the text layer, and then just paint brush over the desired areas on the image. By doing this, it removes some of the excess white which allows the image to be seen more as the detail shows up more.